The Expat Diaries: Misfortune Cookie (Single in the City Book 2) (12 page)

I’ve just broken a sweat hurrying back to the office in the vain hope that Mrs. Reese won’t have noticed my absence. No such luck. She continues to be the grit in my oyster. ‘Miss Cumming.’ She sighs. ‘Please keep your absences from the office to lunchtime.’

‘Sorry, Mrs. Reese.’ Her outfit is particularly arresting today. On Jessica Rabbit an orangey-red skirt suit might stand a very slight chance of being stylish. Mrs. Reese looks like a Royal Mail post box.

‘And please do remember to close the cover on the photocopier when you have finished.’

‘Sorry, Mrs. Reese,’ I sing again in my most false of voices. ‘I’ll try to remember.’ I should be more tolerant, because she’s worked here since the last ice age. But tidying the copy room is a bit like sweeping the floor in a coalmine. The sales personnel simply ignore her repeated requests, and emails, and memos, to follow the clean desk policy. Still, she maintains her one-woman crusade against disorder.

‘And Hannah, you need to go back out. Josh wanted some rubbers.’

I do a double-take. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘Rubbers, Hannah, for Josh. I’ve been meaning to go but haven’t had the chance. Here.’ She hands me a few notes. ‘There’s a shop just over the road. Go now, please.’

‘But I’ve got my meeting with him in twenty minutes.’

‘Then you’d better hurry.’

As if I didn’t already have Jurassic butterflies threatening to oust my breakfast. After two weeks spent poring over China’s knock-off factory catalogues, I’m about to present my choices to Josh. Buying his sex aids wasn’t meant to be part of the pitch.

Oh God. What if, like the cystitis medicine, I have to explain what I need? I’ll be miming a thrusting
gau
to the pharmacist.

Mrs. Reese is acting like buying rubbers for your boss is all part of a normal day. She won’t take no for an answer, so across the street to the pharmacy I go. Hurrying up one aisle and down the other, I’m hoping against hope. Of course they’re not on display, because that would take a tiny bit of the humiliation out of this experience. ‘Hello,’ I say to the young man behind the counter. Sigh. ‘I need condoms, please.’

‘What kind?’ He asks.

Kind? I’ve never bought them before. Because that’s a man’s job… and definitely not an assistant’s job. ‘Uh, regular?’

‘Size?’ He can see from my face that I’m about twenty thousand leagues out of my depth. Patiently he lines up a dizzying array of boxes across the counter top. Boxes with hearts, boxes with horses (for ‘Big Boys’), ribbed, dotted, three-packs, six, twelve, and the ironically named twenty-four family packs.

‘These, please,’ I say, pointing to the least weird-looking three-pack. If he wants more, let him buy them himself. ‘May I have a receipt, please?’ Mrs. Reese is a stickler for petty cash procedure. ‘And yes, a bag, thanks.’

I’m careful crossing the street back to the office. I do not want to be struck down by a speeding taxi knowing that the personal effects shipped to my parents will include a box of rubbers.

‘What am I meant to do with them?’ Mrs. Reese scowls when I try to hand her the brown paper bag. ‘They’re for Josh. Take them in with you. You may as well take these as well.’ She hands me a mechanical pencil, lead refills and a notepad.

I’m not going to argue with her just before the most important moment in my work life so far. Ready. Set. Go.

‘Hi Josh,’ I say, trying to settle myself unsuggestively in the chair opposite his desk… ‘These are for you.’

‘Thanks,’ he says, distractedly opening the bag. ‘… Hannah? What is this?’

‘Did I get the wrong kind? Do you, uh, prefer something else?’

‘Nooo. These are, ehem, fine. I’m just wondering why you’d give them to me.’

‘I’m sorry, Josh! Mrs. Reese insisted I bring them to you. I feared it might embarrass you. It’s sure embarrassing me!’

‘Mrs. Reese knows you bought these? For me? What, exactly, did she say?’

‘… That you wanted some… rubbers.’

‘Oh, Hannah.’ He shakes his head. ‘I’m afraid there’s been a translation error. Rubbers are pencil erasers.’

‘Oh no, they can’t be.’ My face is as red as that condom box. ‘I can’t believe I just did that. I’m so sorry!’

‘Well, it’s certainly the most interesting opening to a presentation I’ve ever had. No harm done though, don’t worry. I needed a laugh today actually, so thank you. Now, if there are no more surprises–’ He waits for my denial. ‘Good, then let’s hear what you’ve come up with.’

‘Sure. Okay. Phew. Thanks, Josh, for understanding. That could have been really bad. I mean even worse.’ I take a deep breath. ‘Ehem. So, I’ve given this a lot of thought. The clothes I mean, not the– Never mind. The less said the better, right? Anyway, I think that the trend for next season will be… peasant.’

He looks perplexed. ‘Peasant?’

‘Well, peasant-ish. Stylish, of course, with a nod to peasanthood. I don’t mean dressing like milkmaids, but a little embroidered embellishment, hand-woven wools, that sort of thing.’ I can feel the worry lines forming as I wait for his judgment.

‘Help me understand your thinking on this.’

‘Sure, okay…’ Where to start? Oh yes. ‘My friend Chloe, she’s back in London, she was telling me how she’s turned over a whole new leaf, and pampering is now her middle name. She’s gorgeous but I always thought she needed some polishing. Nothing major, she doesn’t have a moustache or anything, but her cuticles are a mess, and her heels are an embarrassment. She’s finally come around to my point of view, thanks, she said, to lastminute.com. They’re running £10 beauty treatment deals. At really good spas too, in London, not just the rundown ones outside the M25 that can’t drum up any business without dropping their pan– … prices. She booked a couple of treatments a day for like, the next month. Massages every day, plus weekly facials, mani/pedis. I’m quite jealous actually, although the foot massages here are great, now that I’m used to them, and the pedicures aren’t bad. Is there a lastminute.com here? No? Shame. Anyway, I said, isn’t that tying up your evenings? She’s going out with Barry, he’s my old boyfriend, sort of, and they’re getting along great so I figured she’d want to meet him after work, not spend every night in a treatment room. But she said she was doing them during the day. That’s one of the downsides of the deal, probably why they’re so cheap, because the appointments are just during weekdays. So I said: how can you take all that time off? Because it’s at least two hours for each appointment by the time you get there and back. And she said she’s got no work so nobody cares whether she’s there or not. She’s a recruiter. She says the companies aren’t hiring. Just like a few years ago. So that got me thinking. My parents freaked out when some of the banks went bust, or got bailed out or something. I wasn’t living with them at the time though, I had my own place, with Stacy. That’s my friend who’s here now, living with me. But we went to my parents’ each week for dinner. It was sweet really, that they worried about us even though we both had jobs. Some people might not want to see family every week but I liked it, and they really appreciated it too. Dad, especially, loved it when we were there – we gave him a fresh audience. Actually, Mom was probably pretty happy about that too. Every week Dad had more bad news. He was constantly talking to Stacy about the economy. I admit it was pretty boring, but it must have sunk in because one time, after dinner, we stopped by the mall on the way home, and I noticed that the Gap had gone all tweedy and chunky sweaters. And it hit me. People were feeling tweedy. Home-baked bread and nights on the sofa. Once I’d noticed it, I saw it in all the shops. So when you asked me to pick next season’s orders, I talked to Stacy and asked her what’ll happen in Europe in the next year. She says recession for a couple of years. So I figure that, since the last couple years haven’t been great, women are probably economizing. And if everyone is worried about her job, it’s not the time for flashy fashion statements. And women probably want comfort. Not in a that’s-so-comfy way, but they want to
be
comforted. So they’ll be harking back to simpler times. Uh, so that’s why the peasant influence will be strong.’

His brow is still furrowed, but there’s a hint of a smile playing over his face. ‘Hannah, that’s the longest, most round-the-houses explanation of a fashion trend I’ve ever heard.’ He nods his head. ‘But you may have something here. Well done. Let me see what you’ve chosen.’

Winnie is sitting on my desk when I leave Josh’s office. ‘How’d it go?’

‘God, can we please go to lunch?’ I say.

‘It’s eleven-thirty. What will Mrs. Reese say?’

‘She’ll complain that we’ve gone to brunch. Come on.’ It’s thanks to Winnie that I don’t have to make my own Styrofoam sandwiches or try to mime noodle soup any more. Aside from fast food and chopped salad bars, Western restaurant options are thin on the ground out here in the New Territories. She happily navigates me through the baffling local options. In fact, we spend most lunch times together. She’s teaching me some useful Cantonese words, hopefully with the correct pronunciation, and we chat about our lives now and back in London, where she studied.

At thirty-seven I’m surprised she’s single, because I think she’s fantastic. But she doesn’t date much. She’s got a group of lifelong girlfriends and she always seems to be doing things with, and for, her family. It sounds like the Chinese spend a lot of time with ancestors, visiting cemeteries and sweeping graves and, as the eldest daughter, she’s usually busy with living relatives as well.

Winnie sees only humor in Mrs. Reese’s request. Over our chopped salads she says, ‘But rubbers
are
what we call them. You said Josh really did ask for them, right?’ I admit that’s true. ‘You know I don’t like the old witch, but looking at it objectively, she knows you’ve come from London, where they’re called rubbers? And we call them rubbers here. So she wouldn’t call them anything else.’

‘But I never used an
eraser
in London, so I’ve never heard them called rubbers!’

‘She doesn’t know that though, does she? And even if she was being malicious, what could she think would happen? That they’d make you jump Josh in his office and he’d fire you for sexual harassment? I don’t know, Hannah, I think it was innocent. And very funny.’ She grins.

I guess she’s right. Mrs. Reese didn’t act like anything was amiss. And she did have me give him the pencils that he’d asked for too. No, I can’t blame her for my mistake. Besides, she’s got nothing to gain from making me look foolish.

After a healthy lunch with Winnie, walking through the wide gym doors makes me feel healthier-than-thou. True to her word, Stacy didn’t give up on her campaign to see me in Lycra. But I am proof positive that you can lead a girl to the gym but you can’t make her sweat. Stacy’s in spin class. I’m in the juice bar, and the smoothie is delicious. Incidentally, so is the buff Chinese man who just made it for me. We have an understanding, he and I. He pretends that I don’t spend all my time hiding here and I try not to drool on his biceps.

Ten more minutes and Stacy will finish. She thinks I’ve been on the treadmill. It’s nearly time to get into position for when she comes to find me. I just need to drop my bag, which is full of magazines for my smoothie-reading pleasure, back in the locker room. She might ask questions if she sees me toting so much reading material during my hard-core workout.

There are escalators between each of the many floors, up to the locker rooms at the top. Surely if people enjoyed exercise they’d have installed stairs instead. ‘Bdllling!’ I hear the new text. I bet it’s my mother, wondering how today went. I dig around in my bag, looking for the phone while balancing on the escalator. I wish I didn’t always overstuff my bags. I dig a little deeper. I’m at the cardio floor, still fidgeting. Got it.

Hannah, I saw Mrs. Friedman she says Jake is back home. Shoild I give him your email?

She isn’t seriously trying to tempt me away from Sam with my high school crush.

Thanks Mom, good to know. Has his bald spot gotten bigger?

Send.

Uh-oh.

Suddenly my bag starts to wobble. Things start spilling out. I can’t catch them or risk dropping my iPhone on the floor. I meant to get that insurance. More things rain out of my bag. A tampon drops out. Of my bag. At the feet of a fellow member. A man. A courteous man. Whose first instinct is to pick it up. And hand it back to me. I’ve been handed a tampon in my gym by a man in front of the cardio floor. I’m cancelling my membership.

Stacy is still glowing from her workout when we get back to the apartment. I’m still red from humiliation. I can’t even tell her what happened; it would mean confessing my non-cardio ways. I told her I’d put the incline up on the treadmill when she asked why I was purple.

‘Ah bubbly, we’ve earned it today,’ she proclaims, unperturbed that the champagne cork came within an inch of blinding her.

‘Thanks, Stace. And thanks for leaving work early.’

‘Don’t mention it. I didn’t have time for the gym at lunch anyway, so it was fine going later.’

‘You have been working a lot lately,’ I point out. She’s always worked harder and longer than I have, but now she works twelve-, fourteen- and fifteen-hour days. Sometimes I feel like the stay-at-home wife, waiting for the apologetic phone call.

‘I know, but that’s what’s expected here. Nobody leaves before eight, and even that’s considered slacking off. I guess it’s the price to pay for being in such a booming place.’

‘I just don’t want you to miss out on living here. Couldn’t you go in earlier or something and then leave at a reasonable time? You’re a morning person anyway.’

‘I thought of that, but we’ve got to put in our face time. It doesn’t matter how early I’m in. If I left before everyone else they’d think I was a slacker. As it was, there were comments tonight when I left early. Oh, they were jokes:
Working a half day today, are we?
But beneath the joke is a message. I don’t think there’s any way around it.’

‘Maybe you could get everyone to shift a bit. If you’re all coming in early and leaving on time then it’s not unusual.’ I don’t like that she keeps saying ‘early’, when seven p.m. isn’t early. She’s being brainwashed into thinking that it’s normal to spend your whole life in the office. I’m afraid for her. And selfishly, I’m afraid for me.